What's Cooking?

Is your oven independent of your microwave, which in turn is separate from your coffeemaker? And none of it is connected to the cloud? That's so 2016. The Internet of Things has moved into the food space, and it's about to revolutionize your kitchen. Take the Pantelligent, a smart frying pan with temperature sensors that alert an app on your phone when it's time to flip the meat you're cooking. Or the Tovala, a smart oven that turns prepackaged meals into restaurant-quality dishes. Or Samsung's Family Hub refrigerator, equipped with a wifi touchscreen and interior cameras that connect to your phone, so you can easily check what ingredients you need while grocery shopping.

There's even an annual Smart Kitchen Summit, which Wired describes as "the nerd prom for the connected kitchen set." In the kitchen of the future, a novice chef can feel like a culinary pro, and a harried homemaker can suddenly feel organized, all thanks to technology.

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An Enhancement, Not A Replacement

For plenty of people—working parents, college kids, any busy person, really—the idea of making home-cooked food more quickly and easily is an appealing one. But what if standing over the stove, mixing spoon in one hand and glass of wine in the other, is your idea of the perfect evening? No problem. The appliances in your smart kitchen aren't trying to altogether replace good old-fashioned cooking but instead enhance it, and empower you to try cooking methods you might have only seen in high-class restaurants.

If you're too inexperienced to try the sous-vide method you saw on Top Chef (or you don't want to spend the money for an appliance that is usually reserved for four-star restaurants) you might be willing to try it out with a simple smart precision cooker that does something similar. And if you want to experiment with a new recipe without devoting hours to something that might not work out, the Tovala might be the perfect choice. You'll still be a chef, only.... smarter.